Sunday, September 27, 2015

It seems tautological, not
to mention obvious, to say, but the basic reason the short story is not a
popular form nowadays is that most people don't like stories that are short,
but rather stories that are long. There have been times in the past when short
stories were widely read—in England during the 1890s and in America in the
1920s—but today? not so much, although there does seem to be a resurgence of
interest in England recently.

Some of this drop in
popularity has to do with media, for short stories used to be widely read when
periodical magazines were the main means of print distribution.

Short fiction films,
defined by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as an original
motion picture with a running time of 40 minutes or less, have never had a wide
distribution in theaters. They are
usually made by independent film makers for nonprofit, with a low budget,
usually funded by grants.

In the so-called
"Golden Age of Television" in the 1950, anthology shows, such as The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents were very
popular. Now folks watch scripted series shows on television with different
stories each week, but with the same main characters, often engaged in a
continuing back story about their lives. For example, the popular American
series How to Get Away with Murder
features a tough professor/lawyer with a small group of smart student followers
in which, behind separate cases each week, there runs a continuous story of the
murder of the lawyer's husband by the students.

The growing trend to watch
a number of episodes of a series on Netflix or Amazon featuring the same
characters in what has been called binge viewing is just one more indication
that folks like long continuous stories rather than short individual ones.

Writers who write short
stories in the hopes that they will find readers thus always face the problem
of distribution. It usually goes this
way. A writer submits a story to various small journals, usually sponsored by
universities or nonprofits, and if he or she can publish at least a dozen
stories this way, an agent or publisher might be willing to publish them in a
collection of stories, that is if the author looks promising and promises a
novel next time. It helps if some of the stories are picked up by one of the
"Best" anthologies. The collection will probably sell better if the
author strings the stories together around the same characters and the
publisher can promote the book a novel in stories.

It is next to impossible
to make a living this way, which usually means that writers have to teach in
the growing number of MFA programs in England and American. Sometimes it seems as if there are more
writers of short stories than there are readers. Or, put another way, it seems that aspiring
short story writers are the primary audience for published short stories.

The Internet has made
possible some new technological means by which authors can get stories in print
and in front of an audience—on special websites devoted to story publication
and on blogs. However, Nicholas Royle has taken an old-fashioned 16th
century approach to getting short stories out there. He started Nightjar Press and began
publishing short stories as chapbooks in limited, numbered editions, autographed
by the authors. At my last count, there are twenty titles in the series. Mr.
Royle was kind enough to send me the following five for my reading pleasure.

Christopher Kenworthy, "sullom hill"

Tom Fletcher, "The Home"

Elizabeth Stout, "Touch Me With Your Cold, Hard
Fingers"

Joel Lane, "black country" (now out of print)

Alison Moore, "The Harvestman"

I have read all five of
the books (stories), enjoying them all.
And "enjoy" is the keyword here. My impression of the stories
is that they were chosen to be read once with some pleasure, not to be studied
and savored through rereadings. They strike me as that hybrid form combining
characteristics of the popular plot-based story with some characteristics of
the language-based literary story. Sometimes the weight is more toward
literary, as in Alison Moore's "The Harvestman," and sometimes more
toward the popular, as with Elizabeth Stout's "Touch Me With Your Cold,
Hard Fingers." Sometimes the weight shifts toward genre story, albeit with
literary characteristics, as with the traditional hard-bitten detective story
of Joel Lane's "black country," and sometimes a bit more toward the
experimental as with Tom Fletcher's "The Home" or the literary with
Christopher Kenworthy's "sullom hill."

Because these stories are
a pleasure to read for their plot, it would spoil your pleasure if I were to
give those plots away. Suffice to say, I liked reading these stories and I give
Mr. Royle great credit for promoting interest in the short story by making them
available. I assume that if all but seven of the twenty titles in the series
are out of print, he must have succeeded in his plans and made enough money to
defray publication costs. It is nice to have a single thin volume with a nice
cover and an author autograph inside.

A July Facebook post
indicates that three other titles are still in print: "Puck" by David
Rose, "The Jungle," by Conrad Williams, and "M" by Hilary
Scudder.

You can email nightjar@gmail.com to place an order for
any of the seven titles that may still be in print. Thanks to Nicholas Royle, a
true champion of the short story in England, for sharing these chapbooks with
me.

1 comment:

Tenth Anniversary of My Blog

Friday, Nov. 16, is the tenth anniversary of my blog. I have been taking some time off because I have been working on a new book on the short story. I have submitted a proposal to a publisher and am waiting for a reply. I will let you know when I hear from them. Thank you for continuing to read essays in my archives.

Now Available from Amazon in paperback and Kindle

Click cover to go to Amazon and read the Introduction and first chapter.

Dubliners Centenial

One hundred years ago, the great collection of stories Dubliners by James Joyce appeared. If you are interested in my comments on that collection, see my posts in April 2012 when the book was featured in Dublin's "One City, One Book."